Technical Field
The invention relates to online browsing behavior. More particularly, the invention relates to dynamically predicting the intent of online visitors early in a browsing session.
Description of the Background Art
The booming growth of the Internet has resulted in a spurt in online business. The convenience of shopping at one's fingertips has attracted customers worldwide. However, new challenges abound for online business organizations, for example where the collection of a user's purchase intention data in marketing research is currently more of a routine analysis that does not produce useful insights. Knowledge of the relationship between the customer's purchase intention and the customer's actual purchase behavior continues to exist at an elementary level. However, developing knowledge of this relationship is especially important for new products, which is the area in which such knowledge is currently least available.
The anonymous nature of online transactions presents a greater challenge for the industry with regard to increasing sales, enhancing the customer experience, and building customer loyalty because it is difficult to assess the customer's browsing patterns in a meaningful way. Such patterns can indicate, for example, the customer's respective needs, expectations, and dislikes. Realizing the merits of online business in the sales and service sector, online business organizations are devising methods of offering personalized Web support to achieve sales goals, such as increasing the conversion rate, reducing the shopping cart abandonment rate, enhancing the customer experience in real time, and so on. Unfortunately, mere personalization as now practiced relies upon historical data that may be stale or disjoint from the customer's current intent
To devise a suitable personalized strategy to meet the expectations and needs of online customers, it is necessary to understand the customer's online browsing behavior. Presently, dynamic prediction of the potential intent of an online customer is still at an underdeveloped stage. Moreover, unlike visiting the store physically, online customers face obstacles, such as not being able to see the product physically and not having an option of receiving personal attention for their queries during the process of visiting an online business's Web site.
It would therefore be advantageous to engage with a customer of interest, i.e. a customer who either makes a purchase and accepts chat, or other suitable devices such as dynamic FAQ's, calls, etc.; or accepts chat and may purchase later. This is especially true because the associated cost of missing a customer of interest is high and of cost of targeting the wrong customer is low.